Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I live in an area where Mardi Gras is in full swing, and I can remember from my upbringing that Fat Tuesday was a last ditch effort at debauchery before the pseudo-spiritual practice of “giving something up for Lent” really began. In my youth I would give up some kind…
Part 1: Observations from the Texts (Matthew 9:14-17, Mark 2:18-22, Luke 5:33-39) The precipitating context for the new wine/old wineskins discussion is people asking Jesus why His disciples did not fast. His immediate answer is that you can’t get the friends of the groom to fast at the bachelor party…
Simply, “progress” means to move forward. In that sense, a slug can progress from one end of the sidewalk to the other. But for us in twenty-first century America, progress means something else. For us, it is almost a synonym for goodness. The slug can only “progress” if the other…
I have the privilege of being able to counsel a lot of women who are seeking abortions. I can tell you that the majority of them are seeking to end their pregnancies not because they feel like it would be a fun thing to do, but because they are scared…
Last night, along with a few online friends, I watched this debate on the meaning of life between William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, and Jordan Peterson, hosted by Wycliffe College. While watching it, and reflecting upon Peterson’s work more generally (about which I’ve written in the past ), I was…
I’m glad to have been invited to contribute regularly to the Theopolis Institute website. Thank you, readers, for welcoming and joining what I hope will be a venture of integration. Integration itself is what I want to explore. And for me personally, this is the shape of my current integrative…
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“The religion of our time,” says the writer known as Bronze Age Pervert , “is the unquestioned and absolute worship of human equality.” That may not be the religion, but it’s certainly one of them, and one that threatens to dissolve the moral and social distinctions and hierarchies on which…
Paul is a biblical theologian, and Romans 9—11 is among the bibliest section in any of Paul’s epistles. As noted by N.T. Wright (whose Paul and the Faithfulness of God I follow throughout), nearly forty percent of the text is taken up with quotations from Scripture, a higher concentration than…
Romans isn’t an ordo salutis with eschatological (chapters 9—11) and practical (Romans 12—15) appendixes. When we read Romans as a mini-systematic theology, we’re liable to read even chapters 9—11 as a theological treatise about predestination or divine sovereignty, supported by biblical citations. That gets things backwards. Paul isn’t using Scripture…
David Bentley Hart responds below to my rejoinder . Read this article on the "literal sense" in pre-modern exegesis. There is no rule regarding which fathers thought which stories only myths and which not. As for my historical-critical flourishes, I never attributed them to the fathers. You asked me whether…
Thanks to David Bentley Hart for responding to my critique of his book, and for the bracing clarity of his response. I think we now know where we stand. I hope I achieve similar clarity below, as I briefly sketch a few lines of rejoinder. 1) Of course, the Old…
Romans 8:1-4 follows on the anguished dilemma of Romans 7: Who can deliver from the body of death? Not the law, as Paul has shown. Torah intensifies the predicament, dividing even the faithful Israelite into a schizophrenic who inwardly delights in the law but cannot get his body to comply.…
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